Jake Reese is a writing teacher at an American university. He lives in a small brick Tudor close to campus with his art buyer wife, Diane. His life
is quiet Ė ordinary even. And he likes it that way. But it wasnít always quiet. Jakeís distant past was a life on the streets, inflicting damage and
suffering on more people than he can count. And now someone from his past, it seems, has come looking for him.

A raw, gripping thriller about the price paid for past sins, John Rectorís third novel is a live wire that crackles with the intensity of a man with
nothing left to lose. When two men attack Jake in a parking lot and cut off his finger, he tries to dismiss it as an unlucky case of being in the
wrong place at the wrong time. But when events take a more sinister turn and Diane goes missing, Jake knows he can no longer hide from the truth.
As he embarks on a mission to find his wife, he realizes his dark past is refusing to stay buried, and that his future is about to unfold in ways
he could never have imagined.

Taut and brooding, Rector paints a formidable portrait of a reformed manís slow descent into a life he thought he had walked away from forever.
As the intensity becomes almost unbearable, the pace quickens and the suspense applies an unrelenting, vice-like grip, as Already Gone hurtles
toward its ultimate, explosive climax.  from the publisher

At its heart, Omahan John Rectorís latest
thriller is a love story. Only with Rector, the story includes
severed fingers, a mounting body count, double crosses and lost
loot. Ö The Omaha authorís star is rising and if you havenít tried
one of his novels, Already Gone is a great place to start. 
Omaha World-Herald, October 30, 2011

Dean Koontz fans will find much to like in Rector's debut,
a contemporary thriller about a couple on the lam. ...
Rector takes a stock noir
setup and makes the most of it through clever plotting and
spare prose.  Publishers Weekly

Rector's spare, unadorned style makes these portents and
proclivities even more jarring. A sly and very accomplished first
novel.  Booklist

The last time farmer Dexter McCray went off his medication, someone wound up dead. So, after waking from an alcoholic blackout to discover his tractor stuck in a ditch and the body of a teenage girl in the cottonwood grove bordering his cornfield, things look worryingly familiar.

With no alibi and a creeping suspicion that he might indeed be guilty, Dexter decides to investigate the crime himself. He canít tell anybody. Not his friend, the sheriff, who keeps offering to help him winch his tractor out of the ditch. Nor his estranged wife, whose love heís desperate to win back. And certainly not the Tollivers, his redneck neighbors.

Fortunately, Dexterís not entirely alone. He has some help.

In the shape of the dead girl herself.  from the publisher

Spare and evocative as a cornfield in autumn, The Grove marks the arrival of a haunting, powerful new voice in contemporary fiction. John Rector writes
with deceptive grace, spinning out irresistible prose with a dark pulse between every line. This is psychological suspense at its most seductive. I loved it.
 Sean Doolittle, award-winning author of Dirt, Burn, Rain Dogs, The Cleanup, and Safer